You can see evidence of autumn labor with garlic shoots breaking through. This was garlic planted on a whim, when I spotted forgotten hardneck garlics that looked like it had spilled from a crate by the barn. I wasn’t sure the garlic would survive the epic low winter temperature that might have brought us from zone 6a (average minimum extrememtemperature -10 to -5 Fahrenheit) to 10 degrees BELOW that. 2 weeks ago there was nothing, now the shoots have broken ground!

Hardneck type garlic sends up a false flower stalk, called a scape, and instead of flowers, develops bulbils at the end. Although these small bulbs can be used to plant more garlic, it takes a few years to grow to a large size. Usually, famers sell scapes as a spring delicacy. We will see how it grows in the next few weeks!

I planted another 2 rows of garlic that sat in the barn over the winter. Some additional cloves seem to have survived the winter sitting in a box at the barn, so I planted another 2 rows and we will see if spring planting will yield anything.